The Ink Well Prompt #104 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announce...

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Hello and welcome to the The Ink Well weekly fiction prompt and prize announcement! The Ink Well is a Hive blockchain-based social media community of creative writers. If you love to write short stories, we invite you to join us. Or peruse the work of our community members.

Note: We always launch our prompt posts with important information. So be sure to check it out first! Then we invite you to read on and see what we have in store for this week's prompt.

Special Reminder: In addition to the weekly fiction challenge we offer a monthly challenge. Check out our February fiction contest. 10 Hive to the winner!

Important FAQs about The Ink Well!

What Is The Ink Well All About?
The Ink Well is a creative writing community. We only accept fictional short stories and creative nonfiction stories. This means:

No novels, chapter stories or multi-part stories
No poems
No introduction posts
No memes
No photography posts
No advice columns or self-improvement articles

The Ink Well is all about creativity, quality, community, and engagement. As such, we ask the following:

Please take the time to get to know the community and read other writers' work. Everyone who posts in The Ink Well is expected to read and comment on at least two other stories for each piece you post.
See our catalog of fiction writing tips and make use of our resources. (Many of our writers are developing awesome skills, and you can too!)
Put effort into your posts. Review and edit your content for errors before publishing.

What are the community rules?

You can find our community rules at the top of The Ink Well community (right side of the page).

Please read the rules before posting in The Ink Well, as we outline the "do's and don'ts." If you can't find them, you can read them here.

Our community rules are designed to make our community a safe, welcoming, plagiarism-free space for self-publishing original short stories suitable for all ages. We do not allow stories depicting violence, rape, brutality, or gore. If you have questions, please read this article explaining our stance on violence.

What does it take to get rewards in The Ink Well??

We refer you to the above description of what The Ink Well is about. If you are not getting great rewards, it is likely for one of the following reasons:

Your story has many grammatical errors. (This is easily fixed with the tips in our post, Help for the Grammatically Challenged.)
Your story lacks some important elements of good fiction, such as character development, dialogue, scene details or a story arc. (See our catalog of fiction writing tips for information on these important aspects of short stories.)
Your story lacks originality or does not follow our community rules.

Important tips!

Only post 100% original content that does not appear elsewhere in any form.
Engage with others in the community by reading and commenting on their work.
Make sure your story is clearly inspired by the prompt.
Remember to link your story to the prompt post.

Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement

Time for the prize announcement and new challenge!

Last week's prompt was a special time and the skill challenge was to create a memorable setting. We loved the stories you guys developed from this prompt!

Stories From the Previous Week

Thank you to everyone who posted a story for last week's prompt!

Honorable Mentions
Our honorable mentions of the week are:

Third Place: Wins 2 HBI

@wrestlingdesires: Adventure on Owl Mountain

Then they all heard it, and froze. The sharp crack of a rifle rang off of the mountainside for what seemed like an eternity.

The nearsighted bear looked for the source of the noise, but there was nothing.

Then a man walked out of the brush, seemingly from nowhere. His huge rifle was pointed at a distant spot in front of the bear.

Another crack rang out, and a puff of dust exploded in front of the confused animal. It turned, and ran down the trail faster than any horse would have been capable of.

Second Place: Wins 3 HBI

@riverflows with the story The Back Road

He slows when he reaches the end of the worst of the gravel and crunches the diff lock off, reversing a little so it moves the way it was meant to. His injured hand throbs painfully. He'll have to sort out that clunking noise. Bloody thing drinks more oil than his ex wife drank rum and coke, and that was saying something. He motions for the water again, his mouth stale and tasting of this morning's bacon, salty and greasy. They had cooked it on the fire as they had run out of gas at the beginning of the trip. He had tried to make a joke of it, but he had forgotten the USB lead to recharge the torch, the phones or the walkies too, and the fridge had stopped working on the last trip and he had not had time to fix it.

First Place: Wins 5 Hive

@kemmyb, with the story A Special First Date

The dog's bark drew his attention. They were close to the park. He threw a small green ball and unclipped the leash from the dog's neck to allow it to chase after the ball. He raised his head and caught sight of fresh zucchinis in a fenced garden. The owner bent over her vegetables, weeding and tending them.

Memories of the first time he met his wife, Angelique, flooded his consciousness. "Do you remember the day we first met?" Angelique asked, smiling at him. It was like she could read his thoughts.

Congratulations to @kemmyb, @riverflows, and @wrestlingdesires!

Okay, let's launch the new prompt!

This Week’s Prompt

The Ink Well is fortunate to have many members who are eager to write. It would be wise to use talent on the best story you can write so you can receive the optimal curation. Remember, Quality over Quantity.

Please Note: We try to curate as many stories as possible, but do not curate every story published in The Ink Well, due to the volume of posts.

Prompt of the week!
This week's prompt is Suspense. Our skill challenge will be to create a compelling opening to your story that pulls the reader in, and then build suspense throughout the story. Be sure to have a look at the articles in our Catalog of Fiction Writing Tips for inspiration.

Here are some ideas for story openings to inspire your suspense story:

A child is missing. His mother suddenly remembers something odd he said before he disappeared.
A man is running through the woods. Far off, he can hear the sound of barking dogs.
The prophet had predicted that zombies would roam the earth on this date. He had never been wrong before.
The little girl's birthday is in two days. The only thing she wants is a puppy.

Note that you don't have to use the exact prompt word. Derive inspiration from it.

A week from now, we will select a winning story that demonstrates this skill and utilizes the prompt. Of course, we will also be looking for overall quality in the winning story. Good luck!

Note: As always, please avoid violent, gory, bloody, brutal, sexist or racist themes and language, erotica and other NSFW (not safe for work) content, and stories featuring abuse of any kind. (We have a complete article about The Ink Well stance on violence and brutality for more information.)

If you don't feel inspired by this prompt or the featured image, feel free to peruse any of our past prompts or our collection of idea-generators:

Weekly Prompt Rules:

Deadline: You have a week to write for the prompt, until the next one is posted. (Note: You can write for any of the prompts anytime. This is just a guideline to be included in the weekly round-up in the next prompt post.)
Story link: Post your story in The Ink Well community, and post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
Hashtags: Please use these hashtags: #fiction #writing #inkwellprompt #theinkwell and #dreemport, if you are also posting your story to the DreemPort site.
COMMUNITY SUPPORT: Visit the work of at least two other community members and comment on their work.
Title: The title is up to you. You can come up with any title you wish. You do not need to name it after the prompt or include the prompt word.
Images: Please only use images from license free and creative commons sites, like Pixabay, Unsplash and Pexels. Images you find on the Internet are copyright protected and cannot be used. Be sure to provide the source link.
Length: We request that story word counts are a maximum of 1,500 words in length (preferably 750-1000 words). This is just a guideline. Longer stories are okay too, but they tend to get fewer readers. Additionally, The Ink Well admins appreciate keeping to that maximum story length for our time management. Thank you!

Reminder: Be sure to also read our community rules. The reason for the repeat reminder is that we see many stories describing brutality of women, children, or animals, or that have excessive gore or violence, and we must mute them. Please do not post these stories in The Ink Well. We want our community to be a safe and comfortable place for all readers.

Here are the past prompts if you would like to use them or refer back to them:

#1: Heart and Soul
#2: The moment when...
#3: Beauty with a twist
#4: The Way Home
#5: A Matter of Time
#6 50 Story Ideas
#7 The Library
#8 All the way to tomorrow
#9 Legend
#10 Three Words
#11 World Building
#12 Childhood Summers
#13 50 Imagination Ticklers
#14 Railroad
#15 Cats - 750 words
#16 Your Birthday
#17 Action, Dialog and Narrative
#18 Change
#19 Tea Time or Tee Time?
#20 Summer Camp
#21 Main Street
#22 Fireworks
#23 Picnic
#24 Run
#25 A word of advice
#26 Winding road
#27 Mirror
#28 Shipwreck
#29 School Notes
#30 Three Words: Scooter, River, Midnight
#31 Flash Fiction Contest
#32 A Fork in the Road
#33 Shadows
#34 Three Words: Island, Witch, Cake
#35 Full Moon
#36 Graveyard
#37 Jack-o-Lantern
#38 Family Ties
#39 Longing
#40 Feast
#41 Gift
#42 Season of Light
#43 Believe
#44 Elf
#45 Holiday
#46 New Year
#47 Unlikely Hero
#48 Inheritance
#49 Under the Light of the Moon
#50 Three Words: Shoes, Mood, Adventure
#51 They're Here
#52 Artist
#53 Headlights
#54 Tomorrow
#55 Lense
#56 Perfection
#57 Making and Breaking Rules
#58 A Reckoning
#59 Blossom
#60 Temptation
#61 Happiness
#62 Footprint
#63 Frequency
#64 Sailing
#65 Fortune
#66 Worry
#67 Adventure
#68 Shadow
#69 Motor
#70 Embarrass
#71 Proud
#72 Guide
#73 Impression
#74 Lost
#75 Wonder
#76 Tear
#77 Splash
#78 Brilliant
#79 Sinkhole
#80 Exhaust
#81 Roll
#82 Wishbone
#83 Chatterbox
#84 Foil
#85 I can't believe you said that
#86 Boo
#87 Midnight
#88 Hunger
#89 Light
#90 Spirit
#91 Fire
#92 Tend/Tender
#93 Cheer
#94 Appearance
#95 Ambition
#96 Trust
#97 Fly
#98 Comfort
#99 Fate
#100 To Create
#101 Vision
#102 Sympathy
#103 A Special Time

Thank you for being a part of The Ink Well!
@jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan

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We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan.

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The Ink Well Prompt #104 - Plus Weekly Challenge and Prize Announcement